Budget strains dominate area news

Some people and events get into the news and stay there. It doesn't take much research to find out what's happening with, say, Tiger Woods, the banking industry or even Lady Gaga.

Some people and events get into the news and stay there. It doesn't take much research to find out what's happening with, say, Tiger Woods, the banking industry or even Lady Gaga.

But many others have a moment in the spotlight and then fade into the background. As usual, we like to catch up with some of those stories, which drew a lot of attention at the time -- some because they saddened or inspired us, others just because they were quirky.

Huntington Park opens to big crowds

The sparkling new Arena District home for the Columbus Clippers and a new working agreement with the Cleveland Indians excited fans as much as the struggling economy kept them mindful of their pocketbooks.

Clippers general manager Ken Schnacke knew that he had a gem in place. He hoped people would choose to include the ballpark in their entertainment budget.

"In the back of your mind, you always wonder how fans will receive it and how things will go over the course of the summer," Schnacke said.

The standing-room-only crowd of 11,950 at the home opener foreshadowed a record-breaking inaugural season. The Clippers smashed their attendance record by drawing 666,797 fans. That number and the average of 9,525 a game led all of minor-league baseball. Three national baseball Web sites chose Huntington Park as the best new baseball facility of '09, the same year that the New York Yankees and New York Mets opened stadiums.

-- Jim Massie

jmassie@dispatch.com

Ohioans approve casino gambling

After saying no four times since 1990, job-hungry Ohioans finally said yes to Las Vegas-style gambling in the November election.

Voters approved casinos in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo. But the vote might not be the last word on the casino in Columbus, which was the only city among the four where a majority of voters rejected the casino measure.

Some lawmakers and local business leaders are advocating a new ballot measure that would allow Columbus to be exempted from the casino plan, or at least require operators to relocate the casino from the Arena District.

The casino ballot measure got 53 percent of the vote statewide after Penn National Gaming Inc. and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert spent more than $47 million to promote it, largely on the promise of 34,000 jobs.

They say the casinos should be up and running by the end of 2012.

-- James Nash

jnash@dispatch.com

Columbus voters approve income-tax increase

There are seats to spare this fall at budget hearings hosted by the Columbus City Council.

The $655 million, 2010 budget proposed by Mayor Michael B. Coleman is balanced without any of the pain or political pressures that shaped this year's plan. Services are coming back, and city government is no longer conducting business amid program cuts, employee layoffs and the threat of worse to come.

But even with the higher income-tax rate approved by voters Aug. 4, Columbus will end 2009 with its biggest one-year drop in tax collections. Unemployment will be at its highest rate since 1984. Officials estimate that city government will spend $34.5 million less on day-to-day operations in 2009 than in 2008.

The first tax increase in 27 years passed by 3,050 votes amid a special-election turnout of 16.4 percent. The tax rate rose from 2 percent to 2.5 percent on Oct. 1.

Spending from the income-tax increase is coming in phases. If approved, Coleman's budget would restore weekly yard-waste collection in mid-April and reopen or increase programs at nine recreation centers by September.

-- Robert Vitale

rvitale@dispatch.com

H1N1 dominates health headlines

The scare first known as swine flu started in Mexico in April and quickly spread to the United States, at first mostly through foreign travel.

By this fall, it dominated headlines and conversations and had a new name: H1N1.

Vaccine, slower to arrive than everyone had hoped, was the primary focus of public-health workers, who worried about how severe the new virus might be.

As the year ends, health officials from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health departments continue to push for widespread vaccination and warn that vigilance remains important even though the disease hasn't shown itself to be the worst-case scenario that some of them feared.

As this year draws to a close, more than 3.6 million doses of vaccine have been delivered to more than 3,200 providers in the state, said Ohio Department of Health spokesman Kristopher Weiss.

Of those, more than 285,000 doses were sent to Franklin County, where doctors, health departments and retailers are now giving vaccine to anyone who wants it.

Although actual reports of deaths are far lower, the CDC estimated last month that more than 10,000 died, 200,000 were hospitalized and 50 million were infected.

Seasonal flu kills an estimated 36,000 Americans each year.

-- Misti Crane

mcrane@dispatch.com

Job losses hit state hard, especially in auto sector

The economy began the year in freefall, with mass layoffs, frozen credit markets and a housing market that had turned upside down.

It is only against this bleak background that the developments of the past few months can be greeted so warmly. One example was in early December, when political leaders celebrated an employment report that showed the country had lost only 11,000 jobs in the previous month.

The national panic was amplified in Ohio, where key industries took a disproportionate share of the damage. Automakers struggled with plummeting sales, sending shockwaves through Ohio's network of assembly plants and parts suppliers, and the communities that rely on them for jobs.

If there was a rock bottom for the state, it might have been in June, when General Motors filed for bankruptcy and announced it would close its metal-stamping plant in the Mansfield area and a parts-distribution center in Columbus. The one-day losses were nearly 1,000 jobs in Ohio, not counting all the related businesses that would also be forced to make cuts.

Amid all the job losses, there were also gains for central Ohio. The largest was when JPMorgan Chase said it would bring more than 1,000 customer-service jobs to the region.

The panic has subsided as economic indicators have settled into relative stability. The one indicator that continues to bedevil the state and nation is jobs. Unemployment remains high, and economists say the job market might take much of 2010 to recover.

-- Dan Gearino

dgearino@dispatch.com

Budget battle consumes state lawmakers' time

Take an unprecedented drop in state tax revenue, mix it with a new, politically divided Statehouse, and toss in a controversial expansion of gambling, and what you get is a bitter yearlong fight over how to craft, and, more importantly, balance the $50 billion two-year state budget.

Things went from bad to worse during the year, culminating in a contentious debate and late-night votes the week before Christmas to fill an $851 million deficit in the budget.

In February, Gov. Ted Strickland rolled out his two-year budget, highlighted by a new "evidence based" school-funding system that attempted to determine the cost of components of a quality education. But before lawmakers were done, the Democrat-controlled House and Republican-led Senate not only had to work out hundreds of disagreements, but they also had to deal with a new $3.2 billion shortfall.

Strickland proposed spending cuts and the placement of slot machines at Ohio's seven racetracks. The slots idea passed, but it was later shot down by the Ohio Supreme Court, which ruled that it could be subjected to a statewide referendum in November 2010.

That left a new $851 million hole. The House in October passed Strickland's plan to fill the shortfall by delaying this year's 4.2 percent income-tax cut. After much grumbling, the Senate agreed on Dec. 17, adding to the plan some limited public-construction changes and waivers for school districts to escape offering all-day kindergarten.